- 1977: Harry G. Drickamer (1918 - 2002)
- 1979: Boris Vodar (1910 - 1982)
- 1981: E. Ulrich Franck (1920 - 2004)
- 1983: Francis Birch (1903 - 1992)
- 1985: Nestor J. Trappeniers (1922 - 2004)
- 1987: Francis P. Bundy (1920 - 2008)
- 1989: Ho-Kwang Mao
- 1991: Shigeru Minomura (1923 - 2000)
- 1993: Arthur L. Ruoff
- 1995: Bogdan Baranowski (1927 - 2014)
- 1997: William A. Bassett
- 1999: Vladimir E. Fortov (1946 - 2020)
- 2001: William J. Nellis
- 2003: Neil W. Ashcroft (1938 - 2021)
- 2005: Sergey M. Stishov
- 2007: Takehiko Yagi
- 2009: Russell J. Hemley
- 2011: Eiji Ito
- 2013: Karl Syassen (1945 - 2023)
- 2015: Paul Loubeyre
- 2017: Mikhail Eremets (1949 - 2024)
- 2019: Gilbert W. Collins
- 2021: Tetsuo Irifune ( 入舩 徹男 )
(Birth - Death dates are given after names of those deceased)